Posts tagged “interweave crochet”

Interweave Crochet Accessories 2012 came out this week so I made an excuse to do a little yarn shopping and went out to check the stands. Hurricane Sandy delayed the distribution in some places, it seems, so I wasn’t sure where I’d be able to find it when. JoAnn’s and Barnes and Noble were the spots, though! It was so neat to see my name in print – in public!!

I was SO excited to get a complimentary copy of the magazine, along with loose pages of my pattern in the mail. Now I just need to figure out how to frame them! Anybody have experience with or suggestions for properly displaying articles?

It was fun looking through all the pictures that they took and seeing all the ways they played with color in their festive section. I rather liked my white and silver snowflakes on the white wreath, but putting the metallics on a blue wreath really makes them pop. And it was so much fun to make all the different colors!! I made a total of 12 in I think seven different colors. I prefer making the larger ones with size 3 or 5 thread, but the bitty ones (made with size 10, yikes!) are beautifully delicate.

IC also added a chart for them, which is awesome, but it’s also kind of confusing. :( I mean, look at this mess!

If I didn’t know what I was looking at, I’m afraid the chart would intimidate me. Hopefully it helps with the visualization, though. It really isn’t so terrible as the chart makes it look… It takes me about an hour to work one up which is WAY quicker than any standard thread crochet snowflake I’ve ever made. The smaller ones can take a little longer because it’s more fiddly, but not much. Still less fiddly than my previous experiences with such projects, though. Which is why I came up with the design to begin with.

See, my mother used to make all of our Christmas ornaments and my favorites were the snowflakes. She added glitter to some of them and she also made this absolutely amazing multi-dimensional tree-topper. Wanting to have some of these little beauties of my own, I kept trying my hand at different thread crochet patterns with varying success. Eventually, I decided that the snowflake designs I tried were simply too piddly, so I set out to make my own.

With this snowflake, there are no slip stitches worked into the chain (which is the part that I find aggravatingly time consuming and finger cramping), PLUS you can modify the final design during the blocking and stiffening process. Simple chains are twisted to create the length and points of the arms, which pulls the crocheting together without having to work stitches into the chain. It also adds a textural element to compliment the star in the center.

Now if anything about this pattern is difficult, it’s the star. Its texture comes from post stitches and sometimes getting them worked into the right place can be a little tough, particularly when using the size 10 thread. That’s why I would recommend using larger thread the first time you try this pattern, just to see how it works more easily. The last point of the star is the tricky one, but it’s absolutely worth it.

I’d love to hear what you think of the pattern, so if you give it a try, let me know how it goes and I would absolutely love to see pictures! You can link in the comments here or find me on Ravelry, Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr. And, of course, if you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to holler for help. :)